Apple posts record iPhone sales, disappoints Wall Street

Apple's quarterly financials are out. These latest numbers correspond to the fourth quarter of Apple's 2013 fiscal year, which ended on September 28, and they show a slight uptick in revenue and a slight decline in profits and gross margin. The results are branded "unremarkable" by Reuters, which adds that Wall Street "had hoped for a stronger beat on quarterly sales."

Here are the financials figures for the quarter:

Q4 FY'12

Q3 FY'13

Q4 FY'13

Revenue

$36.0 billion

$35.3 billion

$37.5 billlion

Net profit

$8.2 billion

$6.9 billion

$7.5 billion

Gross margin

40.0%

36.9%

37.0%

And here are shipment numbers for Apple's three main product categories:

Q4 FY'12

Q3 FY'13

Q4 FY'13

iPhones

26.9 million

31.2 million

33.8 million

iPads

14.0 million

14.6 million

14.1 million

Macs

4.9 million

3.8 million

4.6 million

Apple says iPhone sales broke a new record for its September quarter. iPad sales were basically flat, though, and Mac sales were actually down from a year ago. It looks like not even Apple could escape the downward pull of the shrinking PC market. According to Gartner and IDC, global PC shipments tanked by somewhere between 7.6% and 8.6% in the third calendar quarter, which roughly corresponds to Apple's fourth fiscal quarter.

Looking forward, Apple expects revenue of $55-58 billion with a gross margin between 36.5% and 37.5% for the ongoing quarter. Apple posted revenue of $54.5 billion and a 38.6% gross margin for the same quarter a year back, so it looks like the company is bracing itself for revenue growth coupled with gross margin decline.